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Session 2: The Myth of Objectivity

Trum Simmons, a professor at the Harrisburg Area Community College, is a liberal arts professor who does not teach journalism, so he gave an interesting perspective on the idea of objectivity in news writing.

Simmons started off the discussion by telling everyone it’s important to consider history in our approaches to news writing, and that he believes in reflection of history and our past experiences as individuals. He also emphasized the notion that everyone has some sort of bias and specific worldview, so he said he believes it’s nearly impossible to write an article without some sort of bias.

Simmons went on by discussing all the different ways a reporter can be biased, but I think he missed a key part of what I hoped to get out of the session, which was how to avoid bias and whether straying from being completely objective is OK every now and then or not. He never got to these points and rambled on more about how bias is created rather than what to do about bias, so I wished he would’ve had a more well-rounded discussion of his topic.